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JUNEAU - The 6th Annual Balloons Around The World event, an international day of balloon-twisting and decorating organied by KTOO co-program director Jeff Brown, is set for Wednesday, Oct. 5, at destinations in the United States, Canada, China, Ireland, Japan, Netherlands, New Zealand, Japan, South Africa, Thailand, Ukraine and the United Kingdom.

Several events are planned in Juneau.

From 7-8 p.m on Wednesday, the Marie Drake Planetarium will host a viewing of the Leo the Lion constellation. Lion-shaped balloons will also be handed out. Admission is free.

Shari Kemp will lead a church group in assembling balloon creations Wednesday at the Nugget Mall. Balloonists will also be making their way through town, stopping at assorted locations in downtown, the Mendenhall Valley, Douglas and the Juneau Pioneer Home.

For more information, check out http://www.balloonsaroundtheworld.com.

The lineup includes, in order, Amanitas, an instrumental English Country dance band; Gerard Garland, the Zahasky Family String Band, Eric McDowell and John Palmes.

Admission is $5, and the show should last 2 to 212 hours, with a break for cookies, tea and coffee. Enter the church at the door between Third and Fourth streets, near the Mustardseed thrift shop. Take a left inside the door to reach the basement.

Terry Hoskinson and Buddy Tabor came up with the idea to organizing a monthly folk club. Elva Bontrager, caretaker for the House of Wickersham, has been organizing the bands.

Gold Street Music plans to meet on the first Saturday of every month. Each month's lineup will include three to five bands with 20-minute sets. The August and September shows both drew about 40 people and included: Pat Henry, Mike Truax, Don Drew, Martha and Jim Stey, Buddy Tabor, Corin Whittemore, Rainy Goodwin, Bill Childers, Aldyn Brudie and Charli Childers.

"So many poeple play music in town, and they don't get a chance to work up their sets for anything but folk festival," Hoskinson said. "It's another chance to do that here. It's kind of like a folk club in a way."

"We wanted to start this summer, so this winter we'd kind of know what we were doing," Bontrager said. "We want to get people not just involved, but better-known, and we want to give the youngsters and the shy among us a chance to discover what it's like to perform for other people. It's pretty low-key, and at the same time, the audience is just the best audience you can get."

Miller, a native of Northern Calfornia, has presented his "Singing Through History" for the last decade at schools, libraries and museums. He's been playing finger-style acoustic guitar since the age of 17 and the autoharp since 1994.

Admission is free and doors open at 6:30 p.m. The show is sponsored by the Friends of the Juneau Public Libraries.

For more about Miller, visit http://www.folksinging.org.

'The Alaska Reader' to include Southeast Alaska writers

JUNEAU - Colorado's Fulcrum Publishing will release the 284-page anthology "The Alaska Reader: Voices from the North" during the 8th World Wilderness Congress, Sept. 30-Oct. 6 in Anchorage.

The book is edited by playwright Anne Hanley and Fairbanks nonfiction writer Carolyn Kremers. It includes Native and non-Native writers, fiction, nonfiction, poetry, Alaska's indigenous languages and oral tradition.

The other authors include John Muir, Jack London, Margaret Murie, Robert Marshall, Seth Kantner, former poet laureate John Haines, Marjorie Kowalski Cole, Kim Rich and Dana Stabenow of Anchorage, Velma Wallis and John McPhee.

Hanley and Kremers will host two panels based on themes from the book during the Wilderness Congress' Conservation Writers' Rendezvous, 1:30-3 p.m. Tuesday, Oct. 4.

For more information, visit http://www.8wwc.orgprogramconservation_writers.htm.

To order copies of "The Alaska Reader" online, check out www.fulcrum-books.comproductde- tails.cfm?SKU=555-8.

On Oct. 14 and 15, the group will perform as Oktobertfest in the Nugget Mall. Times will be announced at a later date. That will event will also be 21 and over, as beer will be available.

Morally Improv-erished also is preparing for "Unscripted Theater," an evening of extended 15-to-30 minute vignettes, at 8 p.m. Saturday and Sunday, Oct. 15-16. The show will mark the troupe's first foray into longer theatrical explorations. Tickets will be $5 and all ages.